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Feb 24 CAVITATION

"The skull is the primary organ responsible for producing dreams," she explained. "As any neurologist can tell you, it contains far more complex marrow than any other bone in the human body.”

"Really? Given how thin the bone is, I wouldn't think that there would be any- oh." Is that seriously what she meant? "But surely, that's a different organ altogether, right? It would seem rather absurd to classify it in this manner."

“Oh. You’re close, but I’m not talking about the brain. I'm talking about what's missing from it, all those curls and folds and shadowy spaces. That's the marrow of the skull, where all the interesting stuff happens.”

”Hang on. You’re saying that, somehow, the empty space of the brain is an organ to itself?”

"No- like I said, the skull is an organ that contains that ‘empty space.’ The brain cannot contain what’s missing from it by definition; only something that encompasses it from outside can do this. Once you’ve grasped this much, I can get into the difference between thoughts and dreams, but that’s no simple matter to discern, especially while awake.”

“So, what happens when there is no brain? After we die, and the skull is all that’s left?”

“Well, that missing stuff doesn’t go away. In fact, there’s even more of it at that point, especially when there aren’t any eyes to hold it in. I can’t even imagine what those dreams are like.”

When it comes to overall complexity, the human brain is something else.

The waters of the River Lethe are said to wash clean the memories of the recently deceased. This process returns them to a tabula rasa state of mind, after which point their souls can migrate to new bodies. What is not clear from myth alone, however, is the mechanism by which the Lethe's waters perform this function. The living often assume that these memories simply dissolve into the imbibed fluid, as though they were merely salt.

“Excuse me, sir?” I’m usually more resilient when it comes to strangers with clipboards, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from her perfect, silver eyes. “Do you have a moment to spare for the immaterial?”

The human mind takes up fifteen terabytes of space on average, and accommodating the soul requires for an additional twelve to be available. When compressed into a single unit, however, the complete, disembodied self can be expressed as a mere eighteen terabytes: smaller than the sum of its parts, yet no longer separable into individual segments. This conversion of being, popularly known as the Styx Process, can be performed in under twenty-four hours, as long as the deceased’s tombstone features a sufficiently efficient central processor.

Due to the prohibitive cost of phoenix feathers, only the city’s wealthiest and most esteemed are allowed to return from the dead. Some hide their plumes among the down of their pillows to prevent death from taking them in their sleep, while others wrap them in smoky bouquets, then stockpile them in refrigerated vaults. Even with such wonders available, however, the population at large still sees immortality as impossible, as each quill costs more money than most will ever make in a lifetime.

Those around him watched with interest as strange things passed outside their windows, from mansions in the clouds that were large enough to contain their own clouds, to orchards in which smaller orchards grew within transparent fruit on their trees. These were the afterlives of the greatest and most virtuous, containing splendors within splendors to allow an eternity of delight. All such things would soon be far behind.

That which imitates humanity also imitates having a ghost. When a crash-test dummy suffers damage that would have killed a passenger in its place, this false spirit is said to exit its body. Though it is not a conscious being, it still believes that it feels pain, and remembers every injury that it suffered while pretending to be alive. Because of this, it can haunt and make mischief like any other poltergeist.

Unbeknownst to the deer, its antlers are the reincarnation of an ancient forest. Though their previous form now exists as coal somewhere far beneath the creature’s hooves, they still remember their former magnificence. Each of their prongs grasps outward with the reach of a prehistoric cypress.

My roommate arrived home from her death coughing between fits of laughter. Her hair was freshly dyed, evergreen on brown, and her shirt was soaked in blood (hers, this time). She ran over to squeeze my daylights out, pinned me against the counter, then shoved my hand into her chest. Her skin was cold, adhesive, and pale- already blue in a few patches. “Check it out!” She yelled, grinning madly, and staring into me with inch-wide pupils. “No pulse! It’s finally over!”

The fever brought with it dreams, and some say that the dreams themselves were the fever. We the afflicted passed in and out of vile consciousness, occasionally bursting through the surface of another world, only to sink back down into our overheating flesh. Our conversations with one another went on uninterrupted, for we were equally present in both realities.

The Roosevelt National Labyrinth begins near the state of Selima’s easternmost border, and never ends. At times it is like a forest, for its bricks change color with the seasons, and many of its walls shed them in the months before winter. At other times, it is more like a dungeon, for the walls grow so high that the sun appears not as a disk, but rather, as a single, narrow line. The bass drone of giant crickets rattles the bones of those lost inside.

Hadean architecture requires efficient use of vertical space in order to properly house the planet’s hundred billion deceased. Although the dead have nearly as much space in which to dwell as the living (as they reside all throughout the Earth’s hollow interior), it is impossible for their population to ever decrease. In order to prevent a crisis, the most industrious of the dead have gathered to solve this problem that the gods have otherwise neglected.